Rectocele in a woman is a condition whereby the woman's rectum is prolapsed into the posterior wall of the woman's vagina. Rectocele is defined as bulging of the front wall of the rectum (rectovaginal wall) into the vagina. Rectocele is due to weakening of the pelvic support structures and thinning of the rectovaginal wall (the tissues separating the rectum from the vagina) and is primarily believed to be a result of childbirth, chronic constipation, and hysterectomy. The rectum ballooning into the vagina often is exacerbated during a bowel movement as shown in FIG. 1. As a result, the woman may experience the sensation of pressure or protrusion within the vagina, and the occasional feeling that the rectum has not been completely emptied after a bowel movement. In more moderate cases, a woman may have difficulty passing stool because the attempt to evacuate pushes the stool into the rectocele instead of out through the anus.
In an attempt to aid with a bowel movement in cases of rectocele, a woman may insert her fingers into her vagina to manually press against the rectocele, which helps create a uniform pathway for stool to move out of the rectum. Because a rectocele may protrude to the right of left of the posterior wall of the vagina, by using the sense of touch in her fingers, a woman is able to reposition her fingers to the where the rectocele occurs. In other words, a woman is able to press against the rectocele with her fingers by taking advantage of bio-feedback in her fingers.
Though surgical procedures exist to repair rectoceles, in less severe cases, a number of optional devices currently exist to provide some rectocele relief. One family of devices includes spoon-like devices, which are used just prior to a bowel movement to essentially when the bowel is completed. Unlike the biofeedback of fingers to facilitate repositioning of pressure against the rectocele, spoon-like devices are unable to sense if a rectocele is sliding to the right or left of the spoon. When a rectocele slides to the right or left of the spoon, the woman may press harder against her posterior rectovaginal wall with the spoon because she is not experiencing proper stool evacuation and cannot sense through bio-feedback that the rectocele has moved around the spoon, which then may cause damage to her posterior rectovaginal wall.
Another family of devices used to address rectoceles includes pessaries, which are typically inflated balloons that provide static pressure on all surfaces of the vaginal canal (the rectovaginal wall, lateral walls and the bladdervaginal wall). Pessaries offer extended support to address rectoceles. Pessaries are not inserted into a vagina just prior to a bowel movement to the point of when a bowel movement is complete. Rather, pessaries are left in the vagina for an extended period of time, sometimes being inserted in the morning and removed at night to being left in for days at a time, if not longer.
It is to innovations related to addressing passing a bowel movement in women suffering from a rectocele that the claimed invention is generally directed.